Mad World

- SPONSORED -

With winter in full swing, long gone are the days when socialising outdoors was appropriate. But fortunately for us kids of the 21st century we have such indoor social devices like the Wii to distract us from awkward conversations about the local sports team with the boozy uncle at the 21st you were never invited to. While many would consider the Wii to lack in the masculinity dimension, and to be fair, with games like Cooking Mama, it’s hard to take the Wii as a serious machine for the older, more mature, i.e. burnt out crowd. Thanks to Platinum Games from Japan however, comes MadWorld. Touted as “Blood Soaked Action for the Wii” you know this ain’t your average Wii game. Which is a welcome change- Nintendo needs to appeal to a wider, more pissed off crowd if they are ever to break free from the kid’s toy stereotype.

One of the biggest disadvantages of the Wii is its lack of graphics grunt. MadWorld cleverly worked around this by adopting a comic-book graphic style, very similar to the style of Sin City. It is in complete black and white, allowing the red blood to be so much more visually intense, every time your screen is drenched in blood from a ruthless kill. Personally I loved this style of graphics; it kind of made it more badass and was a refreshing change. However it’s not everybody’s taste. Being mostly in black and white it can be difficult to differentiate objects and know where you are exactly, highlighting the fact that the map is a very useful tool. But it doesn’t completely hide the fact that the Wii is significantly graphically weaker. You do notice that sometimes the characters are bit ‘blocky’ and flat, something most people wouldn’t notice unless you’re like me who has been playing PS3 on hi-def TVs.

Graphic issues aside, and more importantly, the actual gameplay was very enjoyable and surprisingly just as enjoyable playing by lonely friendless self. Again this is stepping away from more traditional Wii games, where to get the most out of the games was to have to invite friends over. Using the Wii-mote and nun chuck together you control the character called Jack (in 3rd person). A muscular manly man-bloke type fella with a chainsaw attached to his arm. You get thrown into some sort of crazy sick game show called Death Watch where the aim is to eliminate your enemies in the most gruesome way possible. In fact it’s one of the first things you learn—you are always going to earn more points by combining a steel barrel through the person, stabbing a street sign post through the neck and then, to top it off, slamming the person multiple times against a wall of steel spikes—br00tal! The great thing is it doesn’t get repetitive. Your playing environment is mostly destructible and useable, the objects scattered around can be used to combine into the most demented and sick kill ever. The environment and associated objects also change as you move to different levels, allowing you to continually be creative in your gruesome destruction.

All good, but what makes this game extra special is the cool hip-hop soundtrack and its extremely crude sense of humour all throughout the game. It takes the seriousness out of killing by parodying game shows in its own crude and twisted way. The best example of this is the commentary team, with such classic lines like “No means yes and yes means anal!” and the constant banter, attacking each other as well as self mockery that reminds me of the Retro Vice show on the VBC on Mondays 4–7pm. This game has been one of the more original games I’ve played this year. It may not be everybody’s type of game, but if you like a good laugh and over the top violence I highly recommend this game!

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